Could Michael Fassbender Steal Professor X From James McAvoy?

UPDATE: Roger Friedman has corrected his story to read that Fassbender would play Magneto, not Professor X, confessing "early senility" that led him to mix up the characters. That makes the rumor a lot more plausible, but not necessarily any more likely to be true.

About a year ago a Fox entertainment reporter named Roger Friedman actively encouraged his readers to pirate Fox’s new movie X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Fox (wisely) fired him and, somehow, this has resulted in some sort of direct pipeline into the inner workings of all Fox’s X-Men movies for Friedman. Yep, Roger Friedman, has another X-Men scoop. Suspicious? You bet.

Friedman says Michael Fassbender, whom you probably know best as the dashing Brit in Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds could be up for a role in X-Men: First Class. Here’s where this gets really weird. He says he’s up for the part of a young Charles Xavier. It’s weird, not because Fassbender wouldn’t be good (he would be), but because the role already went to James McAvoy.

The trades reported that McAvoy had the role just a couple of weeks ago. This either means he’s been fired or Roger Friedman is so completely out of touch he doesn’t even know how to properly fake a story. I really want it to be the latter, but the former seems just as possible.

Friedman also claims that Fassbender is being pursued by Sony for a role in their upcoming Spider-Man reboot. He’d play the villain, though no word on who that villain would be. This is at least slightly more plausible since, you know, that part hasn’t been given to someone else yet.